A Beginner's Introduction to Python Web Frameworks (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://stxnext.com/blog/2018/09/27/beginners-introduction-python-frameworks/ <comment><USER3> This is a short list I have compiled a few months ago, FWIW:

        New kids on the block:
        - Starlette https://www.starlette.io
        - Vibora https://vibora.io
        - Xweb https://github.com/gaojiuli/xweb
        - Storm https://github.com/jiajunhuang/storm
        - Responder http://python-responder.org
        - Quart https://pgjones.gitlab.io/quart/
        - Sanic https://sanic.readthedocs.io
        - Bocadillo https://bocadilloproject.github.io/
        - Japronto https://github.com/squeaky-pl/japronto

        The old guard:
        - Flask http://flask.pocoo.org
        - Tornado http://www.tornadoweb.org
        - Falcon https://falconframework.org/
        - Bottle https://bottlepy.org
        - Pyramid https://trypyramid.com/
        - CherryPy https://cherrypy.org/

        Less known older ones:
        - Wheezy Web https://pythonhosted.org/wheezy.web/
        - API Hour https://pythonhosted.org/api_hour/
        - Morepath https://morepath.readthedocs.io/en/latest/toc.html
        - Klein https://github.com/twisted/klein
        - Weppy http://weppy.org/

<comment><USER4> Is there any python framework that optimizes for developer productivity?

<comment><USER5> Django's tagline is "The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines".

<comment><USER6> .. That comes with a brief documentation of 1941 pages (as of August 20, 2019)..

<comment><USER7> That's because it comes with a load of built in functionality.

I am sure Flasks documentation is a lot smaller but its essentially just a few parts of Django (it doesn't have a built in ORM from what I understand). Start adding in the documentation for SQL alchemy, documentation for an authentication library and whatever else you need and you will probably start getting something similar but without the guarantee that the pieces will play nicely together.

(Djangos documentation is really good.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I started Python programming 8 or 9 years ago and went from bottle to flask to Falcon to Django to Sanic.

Django is incredible - I wish I'd started with it. It's truly the most useful framework I've ever used - a real workhorse for building applications.

Flask and bottle are minimalist and get the job done for focused tasks - <USER2> example I hacked together various web examples into an mjpeg server recently used Flask (based on Miguel Grinberg's webcam server). You can get a simple web site up and running in 3 minutes with bottle or Flask. I'd recommend against using them for anything bigger though - you'll just spend all your time reinventing Django (badly).

I use Sanic for asynchronous web servers.

Falcon is great to use to build APIs - it's raw and minimal and built to task.

Indeed in my latest project I use Django for the main web application, Flask for the mjpeg server and sanic as a long polling web server acting as a message queue server.

<comment><USER9> I have used Django a lot for applications where front-end is server generated HTML page with templates. For REST API or GraphQL minimalist framework like CherryPy, flask, bottle and others combined with excellent Python libraries will work great even for a large modular app.

It is not true when you recommend don't use flask or bottle for large apps. On the contrary it will be good for large projects to use minimalist framework as they will act more like library. Also you can write code yourself for the parts in the system which outgrow the framework. My team has built large production level application for machine learning service initially in Django and then later ported completely to flask. Given we don't use templates and jinja2 as most of the front-end is in SPA, flask has been wonderful to work with. Django rest framework doesn't work that well when you just need to work directly with request/responses. Blueprints made it so easy to write large modular code that choice between monolith and micro-service, just a configuration setting coupled with either gunicorn or uwsgi in emperor mode.

All Python framework under the hood are WSGI or ASGI, so a decent Python programmer can use excellent marshmallow, sqlalchemy, alembic, celery and flask (or others) with blueprints to write a performant large modular application and a service layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We need to write a lot of small APIs in Python for SPAs. We ended up going with FastAPI which utilizes Starlette under the hood. I'm surprised neither of them are mentioned here.

Starlette was developed by the same dev who wrote the Django RESTful package. If you mostly just need REST APIs or even GraphQL, it feels far more light and modern than anything in Django and forms some better opinions around things than the usual roll your own stack in flask alternative. Not to mention it's ASGI based instead of WSGI and naturally faster because of it.

FastAPI just builds on that by adding some nice features like minimal dependency injection and really awesome integration with type hints via Pydantic.

<comment><USER11> Do frameworks need to be asynchronous or is it good enough to just spawn threads for background tasks?

<comment><USER10> async is more beneficial for when code is primarily network bound. WSGI is thread based which comes with a higher overhead for task switching. So it's just not as efficient for most web server tasks.

<comment><USER11> Ok I think I get it, but if your backend is say, making a single API call and sending that result back to the user, then there's no advantage to going async since the user has to wait for that network call anyways, right?

Would you use this async then in instances where some of the API calls don't matter to your user?

<comment><USER12> I don't know about Starlette/FastAPI, but generally a true async server _could_ still see a benefit, because while that downstream call is blocked waiting on a response, the OS thread can switch to a different request. This is in contrast to a more traditional one-OS-thread-per-request model, where each thread spends the vast majority of its time waiting on I/O. If your work is I/O bound you can use expensive OS threads much more efficiently. Depends on your workload characteristics and requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of these frameworks, Pyramid is the only one I know of that uses the concept of traversal. Traversal is an elegant way to tame big projects. Whenever I look at a web framework, I look for traversal and I'm always a little disappointed to see it's missing.

Traversal means the framework treats each path segment in the URL as a possible branch in a tree of resources provided by the app. After completing traversal, the framework looks up a context-dependent view and checks a contextual access control list before calling the view. It feels right to declare security restrictions and other conditions outside the view.

<comment><USER14> Maybe a semi-realistic example would help us understand what you mean by the path segment branch in tree of resources part? Is that like /api/<resource type>/<resource make>/<resource model>/ would boil down to /api/cars/ford/fusion/ with cars, ford, and fusion each being a branch in the tree?

<comment><USER13> That's right, except that 'api' is probably a resource also. Your app provides a root resource with a __getitem__ method. Pyramid tries `context = root['api']`, then `context = context['cars']`, then `context = context['ford']`, and so on, until it uses up all the path segments or a __getitem__ raises KeyError. Then it looks up the view for the final context and calls it if all the conditions are met for the view configuration.

That's traversal in a nutshell. Resources can be database objects or any object with a __getitem__ method. Everything about traversal is customizable, but it's rare to need much customization.

Also, if your resources have __parent__ and __name__ attributes, you can ask Pyramid to generate the URL of any resource and view using `request.resource_url(resource, view_name)`, which is really handy for ensuring URLs don't break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I started working with Python around 2013 and I still consider Django the best framework to use. Yes Flask you can pick what you want to use but I have found the supporting libraries to be a bit outdated. Everytime I have used it I feel like I am just gluing together a lot of different pieces and it becomes messy. Django is constantly updated and I have little to no worries about security issues.

Edit: And I have been following new projects such as starlette which I have really enjoyed but I have not bought into the idea of why I need async database access.

<comment><USER16> We have a legacy Django app at work. Coming from Rails and living in the npm eco-system for the past few years, Django to me seems like an anti-pattern framework in a death-spiral.

<comment><USER5> Would you mind sharing reasons why you think that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The post doesn't mention Django's migration system, which is a killer feature. Of course, one should change their database infrequently and deliberately, but it is nonetheless a delight to use, and a feature that is not matched by many other web frameworks, Python-based or otherwise.

<comment><USER7> > Of course, one should change their database infrequently and deliberately,

I think this attitude leads to a lot of crappy code. It's "safer" just to add a bit more to the application layer than to change the database, but do that enough times and you end up with a mess to compensate for a database design that doesn't model what it needs to. (Learned through experience).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will chime in and mention aiohttp[1]. It's lightweight, fun, and the API is very user-friendly for those willing to work on a slightly lower level. I use it to build speedy APIs, and coupled with a good ORM (peewee? [2]) it's pretty dope.

1\. [https://aiohttp.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](https://aiohttp.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)

2\. [http://docs.peewee-orm.com/en/latest/](http://docs.peewee- orm.com/en/latest/)

<comment><USER19> aiohttp is indeed neat. No WSGI (async-based). The API is clean and HTTP- level. Maybe comparable to Falcon in this regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Each of my bootstrapped startups were written using Pyramid:

* [https://www.remarkbox.com](https://www.remarkbox.com)

* [https://linkpeek.com](https://linkpeek.com)

It's pretty powerful. LinkPeek uses MongoDB for storage, and Mako for templates.

Remarkbox uses PostgreSQL with SQLAlchemy, and Jinja2 for templates.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a great resource, and there are some neat inclusions like Falcon, but I find the main trouble when building python web apps is deployment. I always feel like I've duct-taped my carefully written app to the web-server.

<comment><USER22> Where have you deployed? I'm looking to switch for my Django website. I'd like something full-serve like Heroku, but Heroku doesn't work well with sqlite.

<comment><USER23> If you don't mind a little sysadmin work I've had good experiences with Dokku[1]. I spin up a Digital Ocean droplet or AWS Lightsail instance and it's my own mini Heroku.

It's great for side projects without the limitations of Heroku's free tier. Lots of plugins (Postgres S3 backups, Lets Encrypt certificates) are icing on the cake.

[1] [http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/](http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/)

<comment> 52-6F-62 I'll second this.

I work on a selection of internal applications and services and we run everything with Dokku. I was skeptical at first because it made initial [legacy code] deployments a bit of a pain, but I've been converted. Not sure I'd run everything that way but for small-scale applications it's a breeze. And because you have to do the sysadmin work yourself it's a bit more flexible than Heroku.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> FastAPI is my new favorite python api framework. Pydantic and starlette are such powerful combo.

[https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi](https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi)

</comment><comment><USER25> I was forced to encounter Web2Py in an open-source project several years ago. It was awful. Besides the fact that it's stuck in Python 2 (seriously, even today?), it had a lot of bizarre design decisions. For instance, it loaded controllers by concatenating files in a directory - alphabetically. I know Python's import system can confuse some folks, but surely there was a better way. The whole thing left a very sour taste in my mouth, so I rewrote the application in Flask - unfortunately, the lead developers didn't seem interested in my fork. I've moved far away from their project, but I'm not sure what they're going to do come 2020.

<comment><USER26> I LOVE Web2py! I use it for pretty much all of my projects. It is the only Python framework that is super easy to use, has enough "batteries included" but not too much, super simple and super powerful templating, decent migrations, simple data access layer not complicated ORM, no import hell, implicit routing.

Developer has a new effort underway that is a little more "pythonic": [https://github.com/web2py/py4web](https://github.com/web2py/py4web)

<comment><USER27> I'm a fan but found it a bit lacking in add ons for new stuff so am learning rails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I primarily use Flask for my research project. It was quick to pick up and honestly, I like a more barebones style - one of the reasons I use Sublime Text over IDEs. Plus Miguel Grinberg's tutorial is fantastic at getting you on your feet (though I'm still sour over changes compared to his original tutorial, more because its made it difficult to onboard new developers).

However, Pyramid's made some of the coolest shirts. [http://pylonsproject.storenvy.com/collections/56570-all- prod...](http://pylonsproject.storenvy.com/collections/56570-all-products)

<comment><USER29> For once I thought, you're bluffing, and the shirts were of some Rock band, but it's indeed for the web framework "Pyramid" xD

<comment><USER28> I met them back in 2015 at PyCon and they said that they loved the art design of Iron Maiden shirts and Eddie, so since it was their product, they decided that'd make it how they wanted

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are any of these extremely good compared to a framework not written in Python? For example compared to Rails or Phoenix?

<comment><USER31> We're mainly a C# shop with some JavaScript, but I've done my time with php, ror and java, and, Django is still my favourite web-framework. Don't get me wrong I actually like .Net Core, but DB migrations, authentication, testing and productivity is just better in Django (I do have an unnatural hatred for entity framework). Django even had the best learning resource I've ever seen with the testing goat book.

That being said, the job market for Django is non-existent in my area, and most of my country, and that's a rather vital issue.

<comment><USER32> Hating entity framework is _not_ unnatural.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Because it's missing from all of these lists and I respect the maintainer a lot I'm going to throw Hug ([https://github.com/hugapi/hug](https://github.com/hugapi/hug)) into the mix.

Really easy to build fast, versioned, testable, documented, async APIs with Hug. If you're making a quick project would highly recommend giving it a spin.

</comment><comment><USER34> Beginner's guide to choose a Python web framework: Django.

<comment><USER8> Don't know why this is downvoted - it's crystal clear advice for beginners - "just use Django".

<comment><AUTHOR> Django brings a lot of concepts with it. It may be simpler to start teaching with Flask and build up from there until the need for something like Django becomes obvious.

<comment><USER35> Right. With Flask, I can simply get to the point where I'm rendering templates, styling with CSS, adding assets and populating template variables with data from simple (or complex) functions I've written.

You can take care of a lot with just that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually, when the application reaches production, you'll have cobbled together a unique subset of Django.

That's the downside of Flask.

<comment><USER34> And good luck with auditing upstream versions and security in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For such a comprehensive list, no mention of tornado?

<comment><USER37> That surprised me too. IMHO Tornado should be #3 after Django and Flask since AFAIK it has the best built-in support for writing hybrid HTTP/WebSocket servers in Python.

I use Tornado to serve the WebSocket backend for [https://www.slickdns.com/live/](https://www.slickdns.com/live/). I've also used Django Channels to add WebSocket support to a Django app and found it very cumbersome compared to Tornado.

<comment><USER38> +1 For Tornado.

I'm curious if you care for their templates or not, though.

<comment><USER37> Sorry, I haven't used Tornado's templates enough to compare them with e.g. Django's.

Essentially all I use Tornado for is to publish a WebSocket endpoint, and for that specific purpose it's great. For building conventional web apps I'm very happy with Django and its templates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know some may not consider the category as part of web frameworks, but one significant omission is the category of static site generators (e.g. Pelican).

If you want a fairly simple site that you'll use/modify only occasionally (e.g. blog), save yourself some headaches and just use something like Pelican. No need to worry about databases, and no need to worry about how to deploy. I used Django for some years, but the hosting provider kept making changes to the libraries resulting in my web site going down frequently.

</comment><comment><USER40> Japronto looks promising but the lack of community support is discouraging. Another alternate could be Sanic if you are going to use Python 3.5+. Support for asyncio is essential if you want to serve a million requests per sec.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love using webapp2 on Google App Engine. Using objects and inheritance for request handlers really clicks for me, in a way that Flask's decorators and magic imports never does.

</comment><comment><USER42> Anyone have any experience with getting an ioc container going in your python project? What route did you go?</comment>


The Rapid Release Tautology - <AUTHOR> http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/04/the-rapid-release-tautology.html

<comment><USER2> It's cyclical, but it's a virtuous cycle, not a tautology, as the article itself states:

"The only realistic way I know of to release software frequently is to start to release software frequently. You will probably fail the first few times you try. If your release process is painful, it will continue to be painful until you identify and eliminate the causes of the pain."

<comment><USER3> They're using the word "tautology" as a sort of ironic joke.

I agree that they should have chosen "virtuous cycle" instead. "Tautology" is too cute, cute enough to be misleading. I clicked through to the article expecting it to be some kind of rant about how you Should Never Release Software Before It Is "Done".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Weekly releases: the first thing that came to my mind was that you need features that _can_ be done in a week.

If they can't be, you need to subdivide them. Subdividing is the way to tackle any difficult problem, so maybe it's good to be forced into it anyway.

I've been putting off a release, because it (looks like it) requires some fundamental changes. If I found a way to subdivide it, and release it, that would be a great way to move forward.

</comment><comment><USER5> FTA: The biggest change is that trunk must always be stable. You can work on whatever features you like, as long as you keep the trunk of the project in a releasable state. You must be relentless.

This is where distributed source control comes in really, really handy!

</comment><comment><USER6> _tying the release date to the calendar, not to any particular feature_

(Just thinking aloud) Can this be applied to other areas (like _"learn Language X"_ )?

<comment><USER7> Yes and no. The problem is the [lack of] specificity of the goal. You either did or did not release software on date X(+). To say whether you did or did not learn a language by date X is too fluid to be particularly helpful. If you did literally nothing, then you clearly failed; otherwise, it's all just shades of grey.

\+ - One can argue whether or not you got "enough" features/tickets/bug-fixes into what you did release, but that's the beauty of regularly scheduled release "trains". If a feature misses one train, it just hops onto the next one, which is never very far behind. We do three-week cycles and have been the entire 6 years I've been here. When I first joined, I didn't see any way we could keep it up and argued against trying. Now, I can't imagine how our company would continue to run if we didn't have that 3-week heartbeat. (We are a IR top 100 e-tailer, over 200 technical staff, over a dozen "large" projects in flight at once, etc. Not every project goes with every release, but the entire site, fulfillment and support systems all go every 3, 4 weeks over Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years.)

<comment><USER8> Perhaps you can just "name and shame". I.e. say you want to learn language x, then force yourself to report in public upon your progress every monday. You will feel whether you made good progress --- and you will definitely know when you did not do a thing.

<comment><USER6> Yes. This will be similar to "committing to a release date" (no matter what) and figuring out ways to achieve the same. We can also draw other parallels like "keep improving" (without incurring _long-term debts_ ).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IDEO: Big Innovation Lives Right on the Edge of Ridiculous Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://the99percent.com/articles/7080/IDEO-Big-Innovation-Lives-Right-on-the-Edge-of-Ridiculous-Ideas <comment><USER2> There is some truth in that...</comment>


Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet to Death for Atheism - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/20/saudi-court-sentences-poet-to-death-for-renouncing-islam?CMP=share_btn_tw&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Morning%20Brief <comment><USER2> See also this related article:

Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It (nytimes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10603360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10603360)

</comment><comment><USER3> The future is unevenly distributed, some places are still in the 14th centuary.

To not be facetious - progress does not go in any one direction and if we believe in enlightenment values we need to keep making the arguments.</comment>


Let Them Eat Ice Cream - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycYKHTYXa8k <comment><AUTHOR> Marie Antoinette didn't actually say "Let them eat cake" but you won't believe who is saying "Let them eat ice cream" during food shortage induced by COVID-19 lockdown.</comment>


A (shallow) dive into the American banking system - <AUTHOR> https://blog.yossarian.net/2019/12/25/A-shallow-dive-into-the-American-banking-system <comment><USER2> Your analysis on the time for transactions to be completed seems just marginally inadequate, if it is only covering the logistical communication concerns.

About 10 years ago I looked into creating my own ACH system so I wouldn't have to use an intermediary (this was because I was going to be doing high dollar, low quantity transactions).

Because I was going to be setting up an import operation, I wanted to understand what my liabilities might be if a customer either didn't actually have funds in their account or they were fraudulent.

A key concern was the amount of time my company would be liable for the funds transferred to it, because even a single reversal would cause a serious problem for the company.

I learned that the receiving institution can initiate a reversal, and there is no time limit to establish when they can no longer do this. So, theoretically, they could just reverse all transactions for a year, or however long, and my company is on the hook for all of this cash.

Worse, my institution is what's actually on the hook, because they automatically send the money that the reversal is requiring. It seems you are doing a more technical analysis, but the issue comes that if you are a small business unable to deposit $1,000,000 in a CD as a security against such misfortunes, then you are locked out of getting such a service.

Or at least this was the case ~10 years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points! You're absolutely right: NACHA says that there are limits on how late a transaction can be revoked, but enforcement is entirely legal and procedural and not encoded in ACH itself. My guess is that things like that _really_ get resolved with a Rolodex and a quick call to the relevant FDI.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to solve short term cash flow problem going into an accelerator? - <AUTHOR>

My startup has been accepted into Start-up Chile. The $40,000 is paid out as reimbursements so to get the money you need to first spend the money.
Because of this, without a $10k-15k buffer, the first few months are going to be slow to ramp up cash flow.
I'm getting a government severance payout soon which would cover it, but it probably won't go through until we're well through our time there. I've had a couple suggestions on the best way to solve this problem.
What would you do? <comment><USER2> I would have thought twice in the first place to join an accelerator. What do you get in return for these $40K ? Will your startup get this money back at least 4 to 5 times with what they offer ?

A startup should earn money ASAP and any investment should be strictly limited to what can facilitate or increase money earning. I really doubt an accelerator has much value in that (except YC). Note my opinion is based on the accelerators I saw here where I live.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your answer doesn't make sense to me.

Why would you have thought twice? It's $40,000 equity free seed capital they give us.

Did you mean: What did "they" get in return for the money?

<comment><USER2> I misunderstood. I thought the startup had to pay that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would suck!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dorobō - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1256570425275936768 <comment><USER2> I also really enjoyed the article linked to in the replies on the history of using fake places to spot copy cat cartographers: [https://dustyoldthing.com/paper-towns-fake- places/](https://dustyoldthing.com/paper-towns-fake-places/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think your title sells it short...

"Why nomadlist has a non existing japanese city Dorobō ?"</comment>


Big list of incubators - <AUTHOR> http://gostartup.org/incubators/

<comment><USER2> Missing some for sure, would be great to include incubators outside of America (Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia, etc)

Growlab is one of the bigger ones from Canada

<http://www.growlab.ca/>

<comment><USER3> awesome! thanks for your comment. pls share with others that are also looking to apply for incubators. we are definitely trying to expand the offering, but one step at a time. focused on these 30+ incubators, but easily found over 200! when are you looking to apply?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been looking forward to applying to incubators, this is an interesting concept, looking forward to reading what people have to say. I want to see what different experiences incubator acceptances have, and how it will apply to me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reminder - the AngelPad application deadline is TODAY. They're a great program, definitely worth trying for.

</comment><comment><USER2> amazing.. thank you, thank you, thank you</comment>


Show HN: Stuff – An Alternative to Facebook Events - <AUTHOR> https://stuff.li <comment><USER3> The whole point of Facebook events is that it's already integrated with a social network so it's easy to invite people.

I dislike the whole concept of Facebook but sorry, but I find this idea really counter intuitive? Creating social events online but not through a social network...

*edit, so I can provide some constructive criticism. Maybe integrate this with social networks such as Facebook or Twitter (which I guess kind of defeats your purpose of going against Facebook)?

<comment><USER4> Facebook events is one of the only things keeping a lot of people I know on facebook.

But, yeah, it's hard to go to something else cause of the friction.

What we really need is something that is as integrated into fb events as fb, but _also_ allows people who aren't on fb to find and keep track of and RVSP to events.

I think facebook API's don't really allow you to have that kind of integration for a third-party thing though. I would assume this is intentional.

(I find out about a lot of events on fb not by searching for events, but by facebook timeline telling me "your fb friend is interested/going to this event. If you can figure out a way to approach that kind of experience with your non-fb thing, it might help).

<comment><USER5> > Facebook events is one of the only things keeping a lot of people I know on > facebook.

Yeah, it's true for me. I barely use messenger anymore (married the person I wrote the most with), and even then I use it via Trillian. I open facebook maybe 2-3 times per week to check events and that's it. But with all their crappy UX, events is still better than alternatives to see what friends are doing and what's going on locally.

<comment><USER4> And I think it's _really hard_ for a contender like `stuff` to become a better alternative for many people without the 'social network' features of facebook. An easy way to see what events your friends are interested in, as a primary one.

<comment><USER6> IDK, I think there's room for improvement in this area. I've had an idea rolling around in my head for a couple of years but I've never pursued it:

I lived in NYC for a few years, and every so often I'd find myself wandering around the city on a weekend afternoon, wondering what I should do. Ideally, there'd be an app where I could simply open it up, look at a map, set it to the current time or maybe within an hour or so, and easily see events near me.

That app just does not exist. You can get _kinda_ close with a few apps, but not really. In this context, I don't care what my friends are doing, I just want to find something cool period.

<comment><USER4> I think that's because NYC is one of the few places that an app just like you describe would make any sense. :)

In many places, the list of "things happening this hour on a weekend afternoon within 10-20 minutes of where I am right now that I might possibly be interested in" approaches zero.

On the other hand, if there _is_ a huge list of events happening close to you soon at any given time, the problem is "that I might possibly be interested in." The "things my friends expressed interest in" is useful not just because my friends might be there (although that can be a plus, or a prompt to text one of em and say hey you wanna go to this), but because if a buncha my friends are interested in it, that makes it more likely it will be something that will appeal to me, because my friends in aggregate are more likely than random to be interested in things I am.

<comment><USER6> I'll give you another scenario. I was in Mississippi (virtually the opposite of NYC) with my sister and her 2 children. We wanted to find things to do in the area that was kid friendly but also relatively cheap.

This led me to spending something like 30-45 minutes trudging through various websites, the local paper, etc. I eventually found about 3-5 different options.

Simply broaden the definition of "things happening" and the number is definitely not zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I realized 3 years ago Events is one of the strongest features keeping people on their Facebook accounts (besides Messenger). At least in towns with strong music scenes and going to shows is important to individuals. I started brainstorming features a competing service would have but unfortunately due to my lack of web development experience it never came to fruition. I might still have my notes somewhere. If I remember Ill look for them when I get home later.

I think you have way to many words on your home page. This is a service catering towards events so that is what I want to see when I first come to your site. If I wanted words I would look them on your site, the service should be able to speak for itself. Also, someone already mentioned it, but your domain and your name aren't very good. Stuff makes me think im about to be sold something. "How did you hear about this event?" "I found it on Stuff" doesn't work very well imo.

Being able to follow event creators and venues to learn about uncoming shows, and to follor my friends to know what events they are interested or going to.

Opt-in notifications based on GeoIP to find out "Hey, my neighbor is having a yard sale!" Obviously, having the option to create private events that don't notify the neighborhood as well.

Being able to post on the events to ask questions would also be an important feature.

Ill double check my notes later to see if there's anything I didnt mention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks a lot for your feedback and time. Much appreciated. We have had bunch of conversations re. call-to-actions vs. words vs. events. Initially we had loads of events on the frontpage - and everyone just thought we were a new version of Timeout without the option of creating your own private invitations.

Feel free to drop me an email on email@example.com if you want to chat further or share notes.

Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool! I like seeing people find ways to innovate in areas of social that are often just surrendered to FB.

Also, just an encouragement to take the strong opinions here with a grain of salt. Obviously, you have a list of features you'd like to build at some point, many of which are likely mentioned in the comments. But HN may not overlap with your actual users very much, and is likely to have a different list of "must haves" than most folks. Make sure you talk to non-techies!

</comment><comment><USER9> Huge congrats on the release.

Stuff looks great, and my only minor suggestion would probably be to try to reduce friction as much as possible. Show me how many people are attending an event, let me RSVP without signing up (even if RSVPing doesn't _do_ anything), etc.

There will 100% absolutely end up being a "winner" when it comes to events when FB dies, so good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a bunch. And thank you very much for your feedback. RSVPs does not require you to sign up. We will add features like how many are attending and messaging on invitations over the next two weeks. Stay tuned. Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing unanswered by your site (prior to signing up anyway) is what the cost is, or how you make money. Also, your about page is just a copy of your homepage content.

Other than those 2 things, it looks very nice. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you so much for the feedback. \- It is free; and I know we should be more vocal about that. \- We will make money on the professional organisers at some point. Looking into different models with a bunch of different organisers.

<comment><USER11> It's probably worth making this clear up front. If I see that a service is free, I assume advertisements as a business model, which I believe is fundamentally at odds with any claims of privacy and transparency, which your service also claims. If the users are not paying you, your financial incentive to protect their privacy is not clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great idea and events are one of the things holding me on to FB, but the friction to signing up by not offering an option to OAuth (even for event creators).

I don't want another email/account and potential leak in the future -- just let me oauth with Google/FB/LinkedIn, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are looking into Google/Linkedin Oauth. Not fans of Facebook, though... -Simon, Stuff.li

<comment><USER13> I understand that you are not fans of Facebook. But couldn't this be a good opportunity to show Facebook users that there is an alternative out there? I'm just not sure that restricting users who primarily use Facebook oauth does any good, to me it feels like a wasted opportunity!

<comment><USER14> I think the only reason to include FB OAuth is if it allowed such users to integrate the service with FB Events (which, AFAIK, isn't possible with their current API).

I'd say it's a given that FB users also use Google, and would be just as likely to use either service's OAuth.

<comment><USER13> I think that's a safe assumption. Anecdotally though, I prefer to stick with one service and if I was offered options that didn't include my primary choice I might be reluctant to sign up. I just don't think that intentionally walling out a group of potential users is a great idea if you're trying to expand your audience.

I tried to quickly find some numbers on distribution between them. Although I didn't find anything concrete, it seems to be Facebook > Google > LinkedIn. I would actually love to know more about this. Maybe someone with more experience has some more data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks great!

I like hosting small to medium events and even though it seems simple most platforms are not effective:

-Most of my friends either don't use or don't regularly check Facebook

-PaperlessPost simply didn't deliver 80% of my invitations for last holiday season and almost ruined the party. Will never use them again for anything.

-Others just don't seem attractive/affordable/easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Glad you like it. Feel free to drop me an email on email@example.com - happy to discuss further. \- Simon

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's look really slick! One thing that isn't clear to me though is whether it's possible to update an event and send update notifications/email/whatever to attendees?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - Really appreciate it...

The answer is YES! After editing/updating your invitation, you can tick a box to send email updates to anyone sign-up to the event and everyone invited through the platform.

-Simon, Stuff.

<comment><USER16> Awesome :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The "Totally free" at the end of the second paragraph would be better placed at the end of the first paragraph. Right now the second paragraph is not very readable on the background image, and I completely missed it while skimming. I had to look at the "About" page and come back to realize it's free.

Since it's free, what's the business model? Please state that clearly on the homepage. I usually avoid anything that's free and doesn't seem to have a business model (however hazy or crazy the model might sound to some).

Your privacy piece says "We are deleting data as soon as it is no longer relevant." Please expand on this. I didn't understand what "no longer relevant" means. Do you delete events after the date has passed? Or do you delete the RSVPs alone? When exactly do the deletions happen? It's fine if you haven't completely figured this out yet. But saying vague things isn't a good idea in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your feedback. Much appreciated. Will work on the copy and make it more clear. Especially on the privacy side. Also having a dashboard in pipeline showing what data is stored for how long etc.

Future business model will be based on professional organisers paying for services. We are currently looking into different directions based on the conversations we have with different venues and companies. Hope this clear things up.

-Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would recommend putting the "Are you coming?" above the fold, if not the very top of the page. I'm on a 27" monitor and had to scroll all the way to the bottom. If you want to increase conversion you'll probably find that by moving it above the image.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, tried to put it in a couple of different spots over the past weeks - with pros and cons. Will give it another spin based on your feedback.

-Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm unable to create an account. Tried on both Chrome and Firefox. Here's the console error from chrome when I click on "Create Profile"

``` generic.js?id=8ab332005e9019c3db72:1 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'checked' of null at hn.createUser (generic.js?id=8ab332005e9019c3db72:1) at submit (eval at Ea (generic.js?id=8ab332005e9019c3db72:1), <anonymous>:3:4149) at t (generic.js?id=8ab332005e9019c3db72:1) at HTMLFormElement.Fr.t._withTask.i._withTask (generic.js?id=8ab332005e9019c3db72:1) ```

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. I like the idea of splitting events away from the rest of the social network. Personally, I'd include surveys in that, like Doodle. Then I can start with a group of people, figure out what time works for us all, and then organize the event itself, all in the same place. It's odd to me that Facebook and others don't really support this. Facebook does have groups and surveys, but they don't work well at all for picking a date.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wish you the best! Events, at least for me, is still my main reason why I still stick on Facebook. Hope you manage to gain a big enough traction to erode that market.

<comment><USER14> > Events, at least for me, is still my main reason why I still stick on > Facebook.

Same. And it'll likely have to remain that way until I live in a larger city where something like this can compete against FB's network effect; there is hope, however, as FB loses the younger audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks more of a eventbrite alternative than FB events.

my 2 cts

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm quite interested in this space, I have been for a while. In my experience, one problem with Facebook events is that when people aren't on Facebook they often just don't get invited. Would be great to see an alternative that got traction. I wish suffhq luck!

</comment><comment><USER24> Social network calendar in similar vein:

[https://dockitcalendar.com/discover](https://dockitcalendar.com/discover)

Feel free to offer feedback, this is just a side project I tinker with that I'd be happy to check in on if people are finding it useful.

<comment><USER25> That looks cool. It would be neat if it provided a time range, basically a list of upcoming events. Clicking day after day for a week and not seeing anything is no fun. If there is a way to specify "upcoming" or "next 7 days", it's not obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Huge fan of any effort that gets rid of FB events.

My biggest feature request in this space is around address book and inviting new people to a larger event. I want something that can, for example, check my email or other contacts and surface anyone I've been connected with since the last party.

Btw, I no longer have a facebook account and only held on to it for events, until I didn't. Now when I don't get invited to events personally I just think it wasn't worth it in the first place. Haven't tried the site for an invite yet, will do my next one on it. Been using paperlesspost. It's fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We are looking into different opportunities - <USER2> weighing pros vs. cons on functionality and privacy. But one thing is sure, we will do our best to create something you will rather use than Facebook, Evite, Paperless post etc :-)

Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There already a bunch of event management services such as evite, etc. Why is evite not a thing anymore? Because is not on Facebook. Even if people flee Facebook, it's still the best platform. Most of our events are on Facebook and are the most successful. It's not just about the contacts, it's also that once a confirm I'm attending an event, my friends see it, and learn about that event. You can't simulate this via email.

</comment><comment><USER28> I recommend testing your responsive site on smaller mobiles (I'm on an iPhone SE and your site is too wide for the screen)

Edit: it's the "Create Invitation Now" button pushing the width out too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I've spotted a few views that needs some love. Will have it fixed by Friday. Thank you for the heads-up. -Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Actually just yesterday i thought to myself: "How I wish someone built an alternative to FB Events" and here it is.

Really sweet!

</comment><comment><USER30> Genuine question: Did customers ask you to make this? I ask because to me (and it appears others in this thread) Events is one of FB's best features because they own the social graph and I have no interest in a competing product unless if you own a better or equivalent graph.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's totally Brooklyn Bridge Park in the photo, not Governor's island.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've managed to pull together the design team to change it. They were not proud. Screenshot is updated - might require a "fresh" browser. Simon, Stuff.

<comment><USER31> Hey Simon, nbd - just a nit. Keep at it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I like where you're thinking is at. I see the opportunity. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER33> I love Events/Local, but would get off it in a heartbeat.

I've looked at your app. Only Copenhagen and New York events are available. Do you plan to extend to other cities soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Copenhagen and New York are just the very first cities we are covering. We will slowly extend over the next months. Just remember that public events can still be created outside these cities. -Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The website defaults to Danish for me, coming from a Swedish IP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heja Sverige. My wife is Swedish. She told me you guys were ok with Danish ;-) Language switch is in the footer. Alternatively hit [https://stuff.li/en](https://stuff.li/en) directly.

Simon, Stuff.

<comment> rlv-dan We can mostly understand it when reading but it really is not a good idea to default to danish for a multitude of reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yellow-gold The link to your privacy page is broken on the about page.

[https://stuff.li/en/about](https://stuff.li/en/about)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the heads-up. Link has been changed. Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What's the difference between this and Eventbrite?

<comment><USER36> Eventbrite or meetup.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm confused by your event time fields, are they 24hr? I tried to enter in 2:33pm to 2:33pm and got validation errors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Time fields are 24hr. I don't have any issues entering 2:33pm/2:33pm in Chrome/Safari. Could you please try again and send me a screenshot on firstname.lastname@example.com so we could have it resolved. Thank you. Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was going to show something similar, I think there is a huge space for it. But been done a lot of times. Google "The uphill battle of social event sharing" published by one of our advisors in 2009 or so.

Maybe make it and sell it to festivals, like this:

[https://davosapp.com](https://davosapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there an option to create an event without an account?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, unfortunately not. Creating and managing an invitation requires a login. Guests are not required to create a profile, though. -Simon, Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Bookmarked for the next time I plan a get-together!</comment>


RISC-V Vector Extension 0.7 by Krste Asanovic [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F66F1nT1T8o <comment><AUTHOR> Despite using only 1.5 major opcodes "this is by far the largest RISC-V extension". The end result may be a "design by committee", a relatively complex beast, though there is a simpler subset for small micro-controllers. Is there any truth in this?

<comment><USER2> Designing a good vector ISA is _really_ hard.

The problem is "vector" is an entire category of architecture-style and machine designs; it's not a problem domain. So some people want vector for their very narrow domain (ML? IOT?), and other people want vector for some other narrow domain (HPC? media?), and other people want it for "general- purpose" compute (whatever that means).

Hard questions: what data types do you support? Do you support mixed-types? Do you support expanding operations (64x64=128?)? Do you support reductions? How do you support conditional/branching execution? How do you support interrupts/exceptions? Do you support register file reconfigurations? How do you do function calls? Context switches?

Looking at the evolution of Intel's SIMD ISAs, they started from small 64-bit integer-only multimedia stuff (MMX), and are now at AVX's 512b masked execution with scatter/gatters and exponentials and reciprocals... there's a lot of complexity you can add to a vector ISA. :0

<comment><AUTHOR> RISC-V wants to go beyond AVX, on several dimensions (parameterized hardware, generic code base, low-end to high-end hardware, symmetry with scalar RISC-V instructions). So if this proposal succeeds in delivering an outline of the final extension (the concepts to iterate and improve on), that would be a milestone worth celebrating (not doubt as I did ;).</comment></comment></comment>


Some inconvenient truths: A commentary from Merrill Lynch - <AUTHOR> http://imgsrv.kfwb.com/image/kfwb/UserFiles/rosenberg.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really straight talking article that sheds some light on where we are now with the financial situation. I hope posting it will spur some discussions.

* edited to remove erroneous scribd diatribe * ;-)</comment>


Google, H.264 and Sticking it to Apple - <AUTHOR> http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/01/15/google-h-264-and-sticking-it-to-apple/ <comment><USER2> A surprisingly reasonable take considering the title and url.

However, I'd suggest there's a bit more joined up thinking going on at Google than this narrative suggests. Spending $130 million to create a royalty free contender for web video and convincing world plus dog to support it seems above the pay grade of any individual unit.

It wouldn't surprise me if this advance announcement was intended to coincide with Youtube finishing their WebM encoding and Youtube in some way promoting their HTML5 interface and WebM along with it. Not in a brutal, shut of H.264 completely way, but I can see them dropping it from the HTML5 stuff while still serving it via Flash and clients such as iOS and Android, and possibly making the HTML5 stuff desirable in some small way. But his main point stands, that sticking it to Apple doesn't really cut it as a plausible theory.

<comment><USER3> Agree that Google's action across Chrome/YouTube/Android is probably a little more coordinated than I suggested in the post. I read so many articles that anthropomorphize large companies and spin stories where they are hypocritical, vengeful, envious, etc. where the truth is that they are just loosely connected, somewhat coordinated networks of people like you and me that are making decisions and getting on with it. Pundits have always done this (makes for juicy stories and good traffic), but it seems to be getting worse than ever with the Google / Apple narrative. I guess I ended up swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.</comment></comment>


App is Crap (why Apple is bad for your health) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/17/app-is-crap-why-apple-is-bad-for-your-health/

<comment><USER2> Also posted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1133939>

<comment><AUTHOR> It's that utm_* tracking garbage again, messing up the dup filter.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do I do about this internship? - <AUTHOR>

Here is the deal. Last week I applied for an internship and now they don't seem to be returning my calls or my emails. I don't understand what is happening now. Here are the emails I got from them.
I'm interested in your Chicago Internship. Here is my resume. Thank you for your time. On news.yc i'm zitterbewegung I believe i messaged you before. 	resume-v2.pdf 72K   View   Download
 Reply
 Forward
Reply to all
XXXXXXX ✆ to me show details Jan 31 (3 days ago)
Hey, Joshua. Thanks for writing!
I've forwarded your resume, and you should hear from us shortly. Feel free to bug us if you don't.
I have bothered them by calling them on the phone and emailing them but I haven't heard anything back? What do I do now?
Here is my resume
http://bit.ly/resume-jh <comment><USER2> Well, you can either keep bugging them to no end, or you can wait for a week or so then politely bug them again.

Remember, this company has a million other things to do besides hire you. So while it's the most important thing to you, the reality is that it's probably lower on the importance ladder than lots of other tasks.

Ping, wait, ping again. AND, if you never hear from them, is a company that rude really one you want to work for?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not trying to be a dick, but make sure you proofread and have someone else proofread your documents before they're sent out.

Errors tend to stick out, like conference in this case.

Anyways, be patient and persistent, and good luck!</comment>


The Future of Search - <AUTHOR> http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-of-search.html

<comment><AUTHOR> tldr version (although I highly recommend reading the whole thing):

Search is _relevance_ \+ _reputation._ Reputation is the hard part. Communities must/will come around that assign reputation to their members. Google (and search as we know it) will be replaced by something that will calculate reputation of the communities, not the individual members.</comment>


Ask HN: Help to solve this problem - <AUTHOR>

My wife and me always argue about alarm clocks. She must wake up 30 minutes later than me, so my phone alarm, makes she crazy, because I wake up after 3-5 minutes ringing alarm. I asked my friends, most of them have the same problem. They say they would buy a product that wakes only selected person and doesnt disturb others. I thought about different ideas about that but non of them are perfect. ( wirelessly effecting to brain cells of a particular person, vibrating clocks on body etc.) what do you think, how could this problem be solved? <comment><USER2> Both go to bed 30 mins earlier so she gets the same amount of sleep? Or alternatively, suggest that you start going for a jog/whatever together in the mornings so she has an incentive to wake up the same time as you.

Sorry that it's not the most high-tech of solutions. I could probably make an app for monitoring both of those if it helps :-S

</comment><comment><USER3> Design an alarm pillow. Have it slowly escalate so that it wakes you with the minimum necessary signal.

If you're like me, you'll want it to be controlled wirelessly from across the room so that you have to get out of bed to actually turn it off.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could use something like this: <http://www.fitbit.com/flex>

Wraps around the wrist, and has an alarm that vibrates so that (theoretically) only you wake up.

</comment><comment><USER5> My parents had the same problem and kinda solved it by using light alarm clocks. As they sleep back to back, having light one side doesn't wake the other up.

I'd definitely not wake up only with light though, I am far too much of a deep sleeper :s

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Natural-Sunrise-Alarm-Clock- Simulato...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Natural-Sunrise-Alarm-Clock- Simulator/dp/B000YSFS6Y)

Coupled with nature sounds, it might be perfect :).

</comment><comment><USER6> \- Hybrid bed with memory foam and sleepmaster combined that only vibrates on the side you sleep on \- Appeal to your senses depending on which side you sleep on. Spray of water device, touch/smack in he face, smell of waffles, sounds that appeal to individualy (raindrops, sensual voice, etc) \- Hire a butler to wake you up independently if you are rich \- Get into a fight with your spouse and sleep in different bedrooms

</comment><comment><USER7> This is still a concept but would love to see someone implementing this: <http://gadgetose.com/vibrating-ring-alarm-clock/>

EDIT: another link with more details [http://mmminimal.com/minimal-ring-alarm- clock-designed-for-c...](http://mmminimal.com/minimal-ring-alarm-clock- designed-for-couples/)

</comment><comment><USER8> What about a sleep mask, that turns on some lights right in your eyes, of course soft light or make it gradually increase in intensity, but this may only work if you are a light sleeper and any stimuli wakes you up. I can also think of changing the temperature of the sleep mask, get it to be sufficiently hot or cold to wake you up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks cheesy, but it might work: <http://www.sleepphones.com> [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2260912/iSlee...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2260912/iSleep- The-headphones-wear-bed-waking-partner.html?ito=feeds-newsxml)

<comment><AUTHOR> my 2c, It has to be plugged in and it has earphones. I don't think it's a good idea. What ist difference between this and normal earphones?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there are a few ways to wake up something without sound. You could do a little machine that poke you until you wake up, or throw a glass of water to your face (although it could miss it you move too much) or something like that. Anyway, I think it is a good question and could get more answres in Reddit :D

</comment><comment><USER11> Get a <http://www.fitbit.com/one> or Jawbone Up <https://jawbone.com/up/buy>.

Wife used to have a WakeMate. Worked similarly, but they have since shut down the service.

</comment><comment><USER12> Take ackkchoo's advice with the vibrating wrist alarm and wrap it around your wife's wrist once she falls asleep. That way, she gets pissed off, slaps you, and wakes you out of your deep slumber instantly.

Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER13> Put your phone alarm on vibrate and put it under your pillow, or in the pillow case if you thrash around in your sleep. the vibration won't travel far enough to disturb someone else, but it'll wake you up.

</comment><comment><USER14> This might be of some use..Wrist watch with vibrator...

<http://watchminder.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> How about a vibrating alarm clock [http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to- wake-up-with-vibratin...](http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-wake-up-with- vibrating-159358)

<comment><USER16> A few years ago I was living with a light-sleeper, and I was doing some commuting which involved early mornings.

To get up and avoid disturbing her I bought a "vibrating alarm clock for the deaf". Put it under the pillow, and it woke me up and left her sleeping. Definitely a good purchase.

<comment><USER15> I'm taken! why didn't I thought that how the heck did deaf people wake up for work .. really, I had no idea how difficult it is for those of them who work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A shock collar. Seriously.</comment>


A Facebook App For Offering Giveaways & Contests - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=289264554441128

<comment><AUTHOR> I was sick and tired of every page I'm a fan of running a contest with absolutely no structure. Not to mention all the violations to the facebook promotion guidelines they commit.

<http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php>

So I built an app for pages to offer giveaways.</comment>


"My Book Defending Free Speech Has Been Banned" - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2019/09/24/my-book-defending-free-speech-has-been-banned/ <comment><USER2> It wasn't banned - his publisher didn't want to publish it because it was a liability to their bottom line. He could self publish or use a different publisher - it's not "banned", it's just a liability - and not surprising since the author has a problem with false equivalency.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meanwhile on the right: [https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/117606984628879769...](https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/1176069846288797696)

Freedom of speech[1]

[1] whenever convenient for me, which is usually, because i'm in a position of wealth and power

<comment><USER4> Peter Singer criticized the ban, in the article. Is he "on the right"?</comment></comment>


Show HN: A webapp for sharing cocktail napkin drawings - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
http://draw.to
This is a little project I've been working on in my spare time.  It's a web app for creating and sharing little cocktail-napkin style drawings.  You can:
- Start drawing as soon as you hit the site.
- Share on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- Embed drawings on your blog/webpage
- Fork/extend existing drawings
It works on iPhone/iPod Touch and hopefully your choice of browser!  Would be great to know if it works on the iPad or any Android devices and also any feedback you may have.
Example drawing: http://draw.to/DRWSV4
Shortcuts:
Undo: ctrl-z (command-z on osx)
Redo: ctrl-y (shift-command-z on osx)
Toggle color palette: c <comment><USER2> I can't seem to draw anything. I'm on an Android phone (Nexus One) using the built in browser. When I move my finger on the screen it attempts to scroll the window.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know! I don't have access to any physical Android devices but I'll download the emulator after work and check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

<http://draw.to/>

<http://draw.to/DRWSV4></comment>


Ask to HN: How do you deal with changing your sleeping habits? - <AUTHOR> Few times by year i need to change radically my schedule for a long time,  usually 12h change (instead of wake-up 8am i need wake-up 8pm for a whole month)
Do you have any tips?
Is it better to change it fast, even if it means sleep 2 hours the first day and be totally useless, or a more progressive approach (6days going to sleep 2h later everyday?) gives better results?
When i tried to take nap, i either be really tired and it endup a 3hour nap, or cant sleep. I feel mastering the nap skill can be key here.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Melatonin. It's wonderful stuff - non-habit forming, available over the counter, and when combined with a good sleeping routine (environment, consistency of timing) can really help you smooth out a sleep pattern in to something more consistent or aide you in a change like this - though the idea is once you got consistent in the routine that you'd no longer need the melatonin.

It's not a cure all wonder drug however, and will really only assist in inducing the drowsiness that parleys in to sleep, just to manage expectations a bit - but it really is highly effective when combined with solid routine / environment.</comment>


Firefox 4 Beta 2 for Android and Maemo: Smaller, faster, new UI design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/11/04/firefox-4-beta-for-mobile-is-now-faster-and-sleeker/

<comment><USER2> This caught my eye: "On Android 2.2, we're now around 25% faster on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark than the stock browser." I was under the impression that main reason anybody would use Firefox would be for the features and plugins and doubted they'd ever be significantly faster. It's nice to be wrong.

Granted, 2.3 comes out on Monday and will probably be even faster, but that won't help those stuck on 2.1 or 2.2...

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have continuous testing set up for ARM processors, but on x86, Mozilla's Jaegermonkey VM is faster at SunSpider even when compared to the latest development build of Google's V8:

<http://arewefastyet.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't fit on my Hero (I know....) along with my other apps. Looking forward to trying out future versions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a member of the mobile Firefox team, and happy to answer any questions about it!

<comment><USER4> I have tried earlier versions of Mobile Firefox on my N900, and I think it shows promise, with a very interesting UI.

A couple of questions:

Will you support the viewport meta tag with attributes for page zoom and scroll/pan behaviour?

And also will you support the "Touch API" as implemented by Mobile Safari and the Android browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we support the viewport meta tag: [http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/05/10/fennec-meta- viewport.h...](http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/05/10/fennec-meta- viewport.html)

We don't yet support touch events. We're working on it, but it will probably not be reading until the next release after 4.0: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544614>

The newly formed W3C Web Events working group will be coming up with a standardized version of the various non-standard touch events invented by Apple, Google, and Mozilla: <http://www.w3.org/2010/webevents/>

<comment><USER4> Awesome, thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter will finally let users disable SMS as default 2FA method - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/twitter-will-finally-let-users-disable-sms-as-default-2fa-method/ <comment><USER2> Seems like only high-profile accounts get sim jacked. I would love to see some stats to see how prevalent sim porting attacks happen to ordinary low- follower-count accounts that have little influence on the network.</comment>


Sourcery (YC W13) Raises $2.5M to Connect Kitchens and Local Food Suppliers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/03/sourcery-raises-2-5m-to-connect-kitchens-and-local-food-suppliers/ <comment><USER2> Congrats! I met with the team in their YC days, and can say they are all quite sharp, and the market is overdue for this kind of automation/service.

They might want to partner with my buddies at [http://TheOrangeChef.com](http://TheOrangeChef.com), who sell (among other inventions) iPad sleeves to keep them clean in the kitchen. Maybe send a batch of sleeves with every new restaurant that signs up?

</comment><comment><USER3> Having worked in kitchens, it's great to see this. Wish more start-ups would focus on solving real world problems.

</comment><comment><USER4> This kind of looks like a more streamlined Food Hub [https://food- hub.org/](https://food-hub.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome! This team really works hard!

</comment><comment><USER6> Na'ama and the idea are awesome. congrats on the raise and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> Given the name "Sourcery" is already trademarked in IC009 (tech goods and services), it'll be interesting to see if they get to keep using that name.

<comment><USER8> interesting. got a link?

<comment><USER7> Click TESS -> Basic:

[http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/search/](http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/search/)

Enter "Sourcery".

<comment><USER8> yes, i see that: [http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:92q...](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:92q3pi.2.2) but the use is

Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer software for electronic design automation; computer software for creating, debugging, profiling, analyzing and optimizing embedded computer systems. FIRST USE: 20110713. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20110713

which is to say there doesn't seem to be a conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> also here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406714)

</comment><comment><USER9> Sourcery looks amazing! Such a critical problem</comment>


Searching for "install IE8" on MSFT vs GOOG - <AUTHOR>

On live search, the first 3 search titles are : "Don't install IE8, Is it time to install IE8?, and Cannot Install IE8"
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=install+IE8
on GOOG, the first result is "Internet Explorer 8: Home page"
http://www.google.com/search?q=install+IE8
Interesting, I must say. <comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that putting their own search results at the top might be considered non-democratic, but if one searches specifically for one of their most recent and supposedly awesome product they will promote and billions of people might end up using, one would expect that would be the first search result at their search engine. Apparently not!</comment>


How we broke the world record in high-temperature superconductors - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/superconductivity-for-siberia <comment><USER2> The title should say "high Tc superconductors" (Tc is the transition temperature, which used to be really really low decades ago) and not _high- temperature_ superconductors as the latter could easily imply higher-than- room-temperature to those not familiar with the subject...

</comment><comment><USER3> For more information on these experiments by Eremets & Drozdov:

www.nature.com/news/superconductivity-record-sparks-wave-of-follow-up- physics-1.18191

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.08190](http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.08190)

</comment><comment><USER4> Silly question: WHY do superconductors enable hovering trains ?

<comment><USER5> Because in order to drive the electro magnets you need a large amount of current. This causes a large amount of heat waste due to resistance which is essentially lost energy. If you have superconductors there is no waste heat making MagLev trains much more efficient.</comment></comment>


How Indians Defied Gravity and Achieved Success in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/10/15/how-indians-defied-gravity-and-achieved-success-in-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> _It's not just Silicon Valley. We found that Indians start more companies than any other immigrant group in California (26%), Massachusetts (28%), Texas (17%), Florida (17%), New York (27%), and New Jersey (57%). This is amazing, especially since Indians only represent between 0.7% and 3.4% of the populations of these states._

\-- Interesting data, for those curious on the subject</comment>


RSpec and Rails tests are 100% CPU bound - <AUTHOR> http://blog.andrewcantino.com/post/1411733593/rspec-is-cpu-bound

<comment><USER2> No, the test process doesn't usually peg the CPU. Single threaded database connection usage in the test process is the problem.

Faster rspec: spork & parallel_tests runner. One test process per CPU core, and a preloaded rail environment, test run split across processes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I should have said single-core CPU bound, yea.</comment></comment>


Comparing Chinese provinces with countries (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/content/chinese_equivalents <comment><USER2> Some of the comparisons are super dated e.g. the GDP figure they give for Indonesia is 1/3 the 2014 number although Guangdong is growing fast too.

Also too bad this is just GDP comparison not GDP per capita which might more clearly drive home the disparity in lifestyle between the 2/3 of China where people make about as much as people do in Egypt or Mongolia and the 1/3 of China that's more like Argentina or Russia.

<comment><USER3> You can click on the tab: GDP per capita. And there you will see that Guangdong is as rich as kazakhstan.

<comment><USER2> My mistake thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The GDP per capita tab is really interesting if you want to estimate the life standard of each province. GDP itself is interesting for the "global power"/influence of each province over another one.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing too surprising here. The more urbanized coastal provinces and cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong) have much better GDP per capita than the more rural inland provinces.

It would be interesting to see a similar map for the United States. Would it be more skewed or less skewed?

<comment><USER5> There's a link on the same page:

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries)

<comment><USER6> I'd be curious to see how it compares per-capita.

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita)

The information is there and you can look up the countries yourself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reporting on OSCON 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/may/28/oscon-2016/ <comment><USER2> Her talk about modifying contracts is important. I once had the president of a company I was going to consult for tell me that he liked that I made small changes to our contract. As a lawyer, he said it was difficult to respect people who just signed a contract with no negotiation.

I donate a little money automatically each month to the Software Conservancy. Like supporting FSF, EFF, ACLU, etc., it makes sense to spend a little money to push back against the economic royalty. I view libre software as a positive political force in addition to making sense in technical and business life.

<comment><USER3> But reviewing and approving a modification to the contract may be time consuming and expensive. Not to mention the difficulty of having different variations on the same contract and needing to figure out which one applies to which situation.

I don't really see how making changes to standard contracts is going to work for most people. The "it's standard and I don't have authority to change it" is a very strong negotiation position. Unless you're really OK with walking away unless the change is made you have no leverage.

<comment><AUTHOR> She mentioned in the talk that at the point where you are reviewing a contract, the company has already decided to hire you, so you are the one with the power at this point and definitely have the ability to negotiate your contract. This was covered well in the recent LWN article about this talk (needs a subscription, will be public 2 weeks after publication):

[https://lwn.net/Articles/688451/](https://lwn.net/Articles/688451/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which brand has the best slogan do you think? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> American Airlines old slogan was "Something Special in the Air."</comment>


Measuring What Matters: Diversity at Uber - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.uber.com/diversity-report/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone else find the trend to push diversity into everything disturbing? The incentives around programs like these seem misaligned. No company discusses why there are clear gender divides in jobs, i.e. more women in nursing, more men in tech. Or the reason minority groups fall into the career breakdowns they do. Why are we trying to do anything other than giving all people the opportunity to do whatever they want?

Growing up, I had a small group (3 white males) of extremely close friends, they all grew up to be good people. Going into college, that group grew into 6 people, the 3 new additions were a mix of gender and ethnicity. You know what noticeably changed? Some of the people I spent most of my time with were now female or a different ethnicity. Everyone had a different background, everyone had different experiences. Everyone contributed differently. But everything wasn't suddenly remarkably better because there was diversity.

Diversity doesn't inherently make you better. Hire good people. You want credit for diversity? Work on making sure people who come from poor homes have access to learn difficult topics (STEM fields) without having to deal with the stress of paying for school, housing, food, having a part time job to makes ends meet, getting into massive debt, etc. and work on figuring out why these groups aren't likely to go into tech---why aren't they getting their degrees in tech fields? Until then, I'm going to argue the quotas for diversity that seem to be prevalent in tech are disturbing.

I didn't write this initially, but I know it say's they're donating $3 million a year towards select groups. While that's good, I still find forcing inorganic diversity (meaning the amount of people of an ethnicity in the field being way lower than the ratio you're trying to hire) to be a counter intuitive, random PR shot in the dark approach to trying to be better.

<comment><USER3> Pushing for diversity and making sure people from poor homes have access to learn difficult topics are mutually exclusive. Your quote on figuring out "why these groups aren't likely to go into tech" needs to be applied to people who are underrepresented in the tech field. Example : Why are women underrepresented in tech? Is it because they are feeling unwelcome here? Are we as a society unconsciously typecasting women and men into different job profile? What if a man wants to be nurse? I think pushing for diversity in this respect is required.

<comment><USER2> I feel like that's chasing symptoms though. If you push a bunch of women into tech and women aren't treated well in tech, you haven't solved the problem of women being treated poorly in tech, instead you've made more people be treated poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to be a huge supporter of diversity initiatives in tech. That has changed.

Over the years, I noticed more and more that diversity as a topic in high tech had morphed from something positive into a witch hunt against white men and against people who were generally friendly towards the idea of diversity yet did not practice sufficient rigor in enforcing a very specific idea of diversity at their events.

A great example is Nodevember kicking out Douglas Crockford because he made a couple relatively non-offensive jokes using secret accusations against him. Another great example is the ongoing attempts by social justice warriors to force the Drupal community to discriminate against a relatively harmless follower of the Gorean movement for his private life.

Still other examples include unsubstantiated accusations of sexual harassment at OSCON by an anonymous blog. I have been to OSCON and saw absolutely nothing like what was being complained about in that blog post. Yet another example is the continuing efforts to pressure the organizers of Lambda Conf to ban people who privately have non-politically correct views.

Instead of diversity being a "positive thing," it became "if you don't do diversity, if you don't invite 50% female speakers, if you don't have a code of conduct...you are racist."

I also noticed Meetup organizers and conference organizers coming under continuous direct public shaming pressure by screaming mobs online when they didn't have a precisely calibrated gender balance amongst speakers despite a numerical discrepancy in submitted talks. On top of that, I frequently see female engineers now actually _complaining_ about being asked to talk about diversity at conferences too frequently because they are in a minority who are able to fill these gaps.

Finally, and most boring, diversity-related content has creeped into many Meetups, conferences and other events to the point where formerly content- filled events are now 30% diversity-related content by weight. Instead of interesting information about Python, we get 7 talks about how Python programmers can be more diverse and what it is like being a female Python programmer.

I find these changes disturbing. I find conduct codes to be sinister and a form of creeping control by the Left to attempt to extend safe spaces into industry and other places they don't belong.

We have a code of conduct in the United States, it is called the law. The constitution is the code of conduct we need to be concerned with now.

</comment><comment><USER5> Proportion of whites in the US: 63.7% (down from 87.7% in 1970)

Proportion of whites at Uber: 49.8%

Ars Technica: "Uber's labor force—in particular its tech staff—is overwhelmingly male and largely white." ( [https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/03/new-diversity- repor...](https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/03/new-diversity-report- shows-85-of-ubers-tech-workforce-is-male/) )

So whites are under-represented at Uber, even a minority, yet we're told that's still too many. Will they be happy when there's only 40% of them? Or 10%?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how different racial diversity numbers would be at these big tech companies if they had decided to open their HQ in Atlanta instead of San Francisco. I imagine the number of black employees would be much higher.

Now, I'm aware that African Americans are only one under-represented minority in tech, but they're still an important one. Latest numbers show that educated, middle-class black Americans are choosing to move to southern cities (especially Atlanta) at high rates. Some of them are moving for job opportunities, to be closer to family, to afford a higher standard of living, to escape winter weather in the North, or just because they like the city and culture there.

I work at a place with large office in ATL, and we've had a positive experience hiring very talented people from many different backgrounds. The ATL office is far more diverse than west coast offices and every bit as good at their jobs.

I think it's time to acknowledge that trying to "import" diversity into SV is not a real strategy for making tech more diverse. It's not fair to expect minorities to exchange their preferred community for a predominantly white one (with a far higher cost of living) just to have a chance of cashing in some sweet startup equity.

I wonder how diversity numbers at tech companies doing all-remote (like Zapier) compare to SV-centric tech companies.

<comment><USER2> I don't think this has anything to do with diversity, and I don't know of any way this could be measured, but I'd love to see the difference in the level of passion for the average engineer hired in SF vs ATL. I moved across the country to SF to work in tech because this is perceived to be the land of opportunity for tech. I'd imagine a lot of people passionate about what they do come here, and if you're less passionate you may be less willing to do that move. But that's total speculation, and I don't think diversity has anything to do with that. Just something your comment made me think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The colorscheme on the "US Race and Ethnicity" ... ring? ... chart seems purposefully difficult to decipher. On a phone, the colors seem to blend into each other.</comment>


Definition of 'Rich' Changes With Income - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/upshot/definition-of-rich-changes-with-income.html

<comment><USER2> Not really surprising except that maybe I'm surprised the number who call themselves 'rich' is 5%, I would have guessed it to be lower.

We are constantly redefining our view of just about everything relative to our surroundings. Got a 5 car garage full of Lamborghinis and Ferraris? Well that guy next door has a 10 car garage full of them -- must be nice, rich bastard!</comment>


Microsoft Limited Public License Platform Restriction (exhibit B, 3(f)) - <AUTHOR> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc300389.aspx

<comment><USER2> (F) Platform Limitation - The licenses granted in sections 2(A) and 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Context: I wanted to include a sample file from their MSDN website in the repo of a toy project of mine for testing. Apparently that would be a bad idea.</comment>


What type of data/info is very valuable to businesses? - <AUTHOR>

I'm kind of a data geek and I'm wondering how to take my hobby of finding and collecting data, along side learning R and other analysis techniques, into something that could also become a side business.<p>Thoughts? Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> Their brand mentions across the entire web. Their competitor brand mentions. Trending topics Backlinks to your site.

</comment><comment><USER3> The data about their competitors.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some books that delve into Hinduism - <AUTHOR> Hi HN. I am looking for books to read about Hinduism. I am myself a hindu by religion, feel I have not understand the philosophy my religion has to offer. So what books should I read that explains all the knowledge Hinduism has to offer? <comment><USER2> I'm an Australian atheist.. Hi :-) In my 20s I read and loved a lot of religious teachers. From Hindu gurus I loved Vivekananda and Ramana Maharshi ( _The Gospel of RM_ ) most of all. I read Maharshi again a few years ago and still 90%+ of it seemed right, because he says what he knows personally, not what he read or was taught. If you're more theoretically/philosophically inclined, try Nisargadatta Maharaj ( _I Am That_ ).

As a westerner, I also got a lot from the (white) US gurus Ram Dass (many, e.g. _Be Here Now_ , _Grist for the Mill_ , audio recordings of his retreats) and Gangaji (any of her books or videos). They couldn't be more different. I met an Indian woman here whose favourite guru is Ram Dass, so it seems Indians like him too.</comment>